


Nothing Could Be Worse Than This

by isthemachinesinging



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Episode: s06e15 The French Mistake, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthemachinesinging/pseuds/isthemachinesinging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The French Mistake" ‘verse is a dark place these days. One writer in particular is having difficulty coping, when Metatron comes looking for a vessel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Could Be Worse Than This

The dead have set up a constant static in his head.

He watches each of them die, over and over, in color and sound too bright and sharp to be reality. It’s his personal movie-making machine, his brain, and these days it broadcasts nothing but the massacre.

It was the biggest disaster in television history. The Vancouver Massacre, they call it. But the show goes on. And in a testament to the perversity of humanity it’s bigger than ever. He knows they’re feeding on the dead. They lose some of the surviving crew in Vancouver, but replacements stream in eagerly. Not the same, but there’s no shortage of ghouls in this world. And he’s doing it too, still got his name in the credits.

Castiel is recast. He’s against it, and he knows the rest of them are too, but the network insists. They’d been planning to kill Cas off at the end of this season, anyway. A big showdown, the angel turned villain, the Winchesters victorious. He’d hated the idea. Now he hates that it won’t happen. They decided to recast Castiel as his vessel’s daughter—Claire, her name was. Sera’s idea. There’s the big Castiel episode, the one he pitched before everything went to hell, the one he’s slated to direct.

He writes it drunk. It’s shit. He doesn’t care. There isn’t much he cares about anymore.

Vancouver is numbing, fast, and it’s actually a welcome relief to be on the set, to have a new picture of it that isn’t painted in blood and pain. Everyone is either new, or still traumatized, and it’s a struggle to get through. They make it somehow. He makes it.

He goes to the alley where it happened. It’s raining, the asphalt dark and slick, but he can still see dark stains where a life ran out according to the script he wrote. Or he imagines he sees them, and that’s close enough to reality. He leans against the wall and sobs, and it’s like bleeding sorrow, and his tears taste like blood. He goes back to LA prepared to leave. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but he can’t stay. He can feel himself breaking apart, and he needs to leave while there’s still something to hold on to.

_“I’m leaving the show. I can’t do this anymore.”_

_“None of us can, but we keep on.”_

_“I’m writing shit, and you know it.”_

_“It’s not that bad…Give it time, we’re all in shock now.”_

_“We’re eating the dead.”_

_And as he walks out of the office, he hears her, quietly: “I know.”_

But in the end, she’s the one who gets out. God knows she’s carrying her own guilt— _this was my responsibility,_ she tells him after one of the seemingly endless funerals _, I was the one in charge_ —and God knows it’s undeserved. They’ve all got their guilt. He knows he’s blamed for the Vancouver Massacre. Hell, most days he blames himself. It happened just as he wrote it, didn’t it? He thinks he should have left along with her, but he’s really not good for much anymore. He’s just a ghost haunting the offices, haunted by ghosts.

He’s hardly sober these days. He can see everything that happened there, in his mind’s eye, even though he wasn’t there—whenever he isn’t drunk or stoned those imagined memories are there, sharp and slicing into his brain. He doesn’t want to be sober. He doesn’t want to remember any of it.

He doesn’t believe in angels.

When he first hears the voice, he thinks he’s finally gone crazy. He’s almost happy about it, really. He’s already lost himself. At first he’s not sure what it’s saying—strange, since he’s making it up in his head, and he’s never been short of imagination. It’s a high-pitched whine inside his ears. It nauseates him, keeps him awake nights, but it’s a better companion than the nightmares of a flashing knife and a dark alley.

After a while, the static becomes words, and he starts to listen. He doesn’t understand, at first; the voice tells him of a tablet unearthed, Purgatory emptied, the destruction of Heaven. It’s everything that’s happening in the show, and he figures that’s just final proof that he’s finally broken completely.

“Who are you?” he asks the voice one dark and empty morning.

_I am the Scribe. I have chronicled the creation of worlds, the first breath of the very first souls. And you are mine._

“If you were real, you would tell me things I didn’t know.”

_It is not my reality you should be concerned about. Your world is an empty shadow of the true universe. I have called you because I need you._

He laughs at that, high and shaky, “No one needs me. I used to be worth something, I think I was anyway, but that’s gone. Everything’s shit now. Everything’s gone to hell. We’re all…damned.”

He wants to cry, memories piercing at the drunken numbness he’s surrounded himself with, but there have been no tears since the night in the Vancouver alley. And he doesn’t want to cry in front of the voice, even if it is only a fractured part of him.

_You are not worthless. And I can ease your pain. You need only say yes._

And, finally, he answers.

“Yes. All right, you fucker? If you’re real, then yes.” If nothing else, it’s a way out.

And suddenly the voice is not just static; it’s light and pain, burning. It’s real, all too real, and he wants to scream no, I’ve changed my mind, but it’s too late; he can’t take it back. Something in him flares, his soul burning, and then he knows nothing more.

It’s a relief.


End file.
